Opera America’s annual Opera Conference kicked off in Memphis on Tuesday, May 20th, welcoming hundreds of opera professionals from across the nation to the city for discussions, networking, and performances. Opera Memphis is serving as the host company, making it the smallest company ever to host.
Yet the company’s size is just why Ned Canty, Opera Memphis’ general director, has been advocating for the conference to be held in Memphis for years, he says. “Historically, the conferences have been in larger cities with larger companies, but larger companies can learn something from smaller companies. There’s a benefit to everyone in seeing how we do things in different parts of the country.”
And being in Memphis, Canty says, has its added benefits. “With our history as a city in terms of music and influence on American music and our city as a hub for civil rights, I just think there were a lot of reasons why it made sense for the conference to be here.”
The conference’s agenda is packed through Friday, May 23rd, and Opera Memphis will have the chance to showcase its community-focused approach to opera. “We have been part of a movement over the past decade where companies have been looking at what their value to their cities is,” Canty says. “It’s termed civic practice. [It’s] the idea that what we do needs to go beyond just putting on shows, just what we do in the opera house.”
As an example, Canty points to the company’s 14-year-old 30 Days of Opera program, which brings free opera performances throughout the city. “It’s been something that fits in very well with Memphis and fits in with the Memphis mentality and with the conference,” Canty says.
Thirty Days also stemmed from conferences from years ago. “There was lots of inspiration from other companies,” Canty admits. “But we took it, we made it very Memphis, we made it very grit and grind, and we really put it at the heart of our mission and our activities, and what we learned from that, we’ve been able to share at other conferences.”
Now, Canty hopes to share even more from what Opera Memphis has learned — and what other Memphians in the arts have learned. Indeed, Memphis-based speakers will sit on various panels: Mayor Paul Young, Ekundayo Bandele of Hattiloo Theatre, Samson Mobashar of the Soulsville Foundation, Darel Snodgrass of WKNO-FM, Christopher Reyes of BVO, Director of Creative and Cultural Economy DeMarcus Suggs, Rachel Knox of the Hyde Family Foundation, Anasa Troutman of the Big We, and panelists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Scheidt School of Music, and the University of Memphis.
Many of the panelists represent organizations, with which Opera Memphis collaborates. “One of the great things about Memphis is that it is a Goldilocks-sized city. It’s not too big and it’s not too small,” Canty says. “And while there are challenges to that size, it does mean that it’s big enough to have resources and audiences and lots of different arts organizations, and we support each other. … I think this is hopefully going to inspire some folks to seek out new partners and collaborators in their cities.”
“And you know that is, for me, the most important part of it: The conference is a place to share things,” Canty says. “My hope is that some of the stuff that Memphis has to teach folks can be taught during the conference this time around, and then next year, we’ll be in another city, and the folks there will have their special things that they’ve learned, and they can inspire us and other opera companies in return — especially at a time like this, when there’s a pretty concerted effort to zero out the National Endowment for the Arts. This is more important than ever that we’re all talking to each other about how we can ensure that this does not that this does not bring us to our knees. How can we work together to ensure that we still fulfill our missions, that we still tell stories, that we still make music together?”
In the name of making music, Opera Memphis will put on La Calisto on Wednesday and Friday, with both performances open to the public, not just those attending the conference. Described as a “great Baroque opera,” La Calisto blends several Roman myths, traversing themes of love, lust, responsibility, and desire. The opera will feature local singers, company artists, and a few traveling artists. “We purposefully looked for a show where the creativity and the talent, the human talent, was the most important part of it,” Canty says.
Capturing the human talent, Canty says, is one of the things an Opera Memphis show does best. “People always think of operas as this very big art form, an excessive art form. And that is sometimes true, but if you look back to the roots of it, a lot of pieces that were written in the earliest years of opera were written for very, very small theaters, theaters that are much closer in size to Playhouse on the Square than a 4,000-seat theater like you might find in a bigger city. And so by doing it this way, we’re able to really just kind of hone in on doing the show as well as it can be done.”
Opera Memphis’ production of La Calisto will also take on a bit of a Memphis flavor, Canty says. In one scene, the troupe has replaced a battle outfitted with spears and swords with a dance battle bringing in multiple styles of dance, including, of course, Memphis jookin’.
In addition, to La Calisto, Opera Memphis will perform arias of select commissioned works, some a few years old, some still in progress, some yet to be debuted. These performances will only be accessible to conference attendees, but the hope is that another company may want to co-produce a piece in progress or do their own production of one that’s already shown. And don’t worry, Canty says, Memphis will one day see these in-progress and yet-to-be-debuted works.
To find out more about or to register for the Opera Conference, visit operaamerica.org. To purchase tickets to La Calisto on Friday, May 23rd, 7:30 p.m., visit operamemphis.org. Tickets cost $10 to $75. The production will include heavy haze and some strobe light effects. Tickets for Wednesday night’s performance have sold out.
